One last try?
by bhut
Summary: Post S4-finale of AoS; the team is recovering from their clash with Aida and the framework, when they come across an 0-8-4, and everything is different again. And meanwhile, what is Loki up to?
1. Prologue

**Prologue**

 _Disclaimer: no one of the characters belong to me, but to their respective owners, and especially Marvel™._

The void between the stars was darker than fur of a moleskin. The distant stars twinkled brightly yet coldly, small dots of clear, crystal white light amongst a sea of darkness. In places, various planets that shone more warmly with other colors supplemented them.

In other places, the stars flared up or extinguished completely or changed the color, or – did something else. The stars were alive, in a sense, just – inedible, even to Galactus, who made his living by eating planets, BTW, but this wasn't about him, not now.

Who was this about? Maybe it was about a certain ex-member of Asgardian royal family, who was busy extracting something, reminiscent of a pyramid, sometimes as glimmering as gold, and sometimes – as dark as onyx, from Mercury. No, not the element of mercury, i.e. a liquid a metal, but the planet Mercury, perhaps the smallest planet in the entire Solar System known to people, or rather – to the Midgardians. Despite the lack of atmosphere, solar radiation, and the proximity to the Sun, (a smallish star, but right now it compensated for its small size by its' nearness), the former prince of Asgard, (current status – undetermined) was apparently unbothered, as he used his magical powers to extract the aforementioned pyramid, (or whatever the doodad really was). Any agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., had they been present there, would've immediately deduced that this was an 0-8-4, but right now there were no agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. in sight or in the vicinity, not even Nick Fury, and the man in question was frightfully unpredictable and mysterious in his own right…

Still, Loki of Asgard, (for this was him, let us be honest here now), was fairly certain that Nick Fury _wasn't_ lurking behind any nearby mercurian rocks…maybe not 100% sure, but 75+% sure, which were odds that he would take, for Nick Fury was scary!.. However, that aside, he was both sure that Fury was not around _and_ concentrated on extracting the 0-8-4 (let us call it that from now on) from the strata. It was a fairly large 0-8-4, and a heavy one – for example, no Midgardian would've been able to carry it around by themselves, and while magic made it easier for Loki to do whatever it was that the alien needed to do, it didn't made the 0-8-4 any lighter, physically speaking; in fact, the strain on Loki's magic was very immense, the alien was struggling to keep it under control and not interacting with the 0-8-4 too badly, for otherwise it would be bad – not just for Loki, but for the entire planet of Mercury, and the rest of the Solar System…

"Aha! There you are!" yelled Sif, lady of Asgard as she popped seemingly from nowhere and slammed her blade into Loki. Well, okay, she intended to stab her former friend, but her blade had bounced of his armor, so Loki remained alive and intact…but his concentration got shot to pieces; with a discharge of energy, the 0-8-4 shot beyond Loki and Sif, missing the sun by a hair's width, and vanishing in the distance, in the general direction of planet Earth instead. (At that moment in time, Mercury and Earth were opposite to each other, but that was not important).

…Loki and Sif looked at the 0-8-4 vanishing in the distance until the glow of the Sun obscured it completely, and then they turned and faced each other. Moreover, it seemed that luck was still against Sif, as Loki knocked her sword out of her grasp, almost breaking it in two in the process, and then slammed her against a nearby rock, almost breaking his former friend into pieces as well.

"You!" he snarled at Sif, angrier than he ever was, with her or otherwise. "Do you know what you have done?"

"No," Sif rasped, aware that her former friend was about to crush her throat – effortlessly, which was bad on several levels, and not just the obvious. "What?"

"You have ruined my best plan from saving the Nine Worlds from Thanos," Loki growled through clenched teeth. "Now I _must_ recover – the doodad, or the world is doomed, not just from Thanos, but from it as well!"

He released Sif and turned around leave in high dudgeon – or tried to, because Sif had another coughing fit, in part because that Loki's grip on her neck had been too tight, and in part, because Mercury is not a healthy place to be for long for anyone, even an Asgardian. Consequently, Sif was unable to shrug off Loki's grip immediately and instead vomited in earnest.

"Oh, for All-Father's sake!" Loki snapped. He stopped her departure, came over to Sif and helped her to stand up. "This is really a bad day, you know?"

Sif just glared.

 _TBC_


	2. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

 _Disclaimer: see the previous chapter._

Fitz dreamt. He was back at the Playground, as it once was – undestroyed by the LMDs of the Russians, and Radcliffe, and Aida. Everything was fine and new, unharmed, unburned, undestroyed; everything 'un-', put otherwise, and that included uninhabited; as far as Fitz could see, there was not _anyone_ in the Playground, no one but him. This…was not good.

"Hello!" he yelled out. "Anyone here? May? Daisy? Coulson? Jemma? Mack? Yo-Yo? Anyone? Please, answer me! Did Aida kill _everyone_?!"

"Now _there's_ an interesting idea," came the jovial reply of director Mace of all the people. "Agent Fitz, what's with the blatant lack of professionalism? An agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. must remain ever vigilant and professional regardless of their surroundings and circumstances!" He jabbed his finger upwards.

"Yes sir!" Fitz replied brightly – he never grew to like the other man, regardless of the latter's last stunt as the Patriot back in the framework. He looked upwards, as the bigger man was indicating, and saw nothing, save for the regular ceiling of the Playground, which was nothing special, actually. "What are we looking at?"

"Are you being obtuse on purpose, agent Fitz?" Mace did not sound too happy with Fitz either. "I was being rhetorical, you know? Inspirational, too."

"Sorry sir," Fitz did his best to be appropriately bashful. "So, what is happening here?"

"You tell me, it's your dream!" Mace replied brightly as the scenery changed and Fitz once more relieved the sight of the Ghost Rider possessing Coulson in order to kill Ophelia…well, Aida. But still, the smell of her dying, of her flesh cooking and burning, remained the same. The sight of her last look at him…ditto. All hail the victorious heroes! Fitz felt so proud. Not.

"Hm. Nice sight. Well no, not really, but again, I'm guessing that you're enjoying it," Mace himself sounded somewhat doubtful about the potential enjoyment value of the show. "Right?"

"No," Fitz twitched. "I'm not. Ophelia…I mean Aida…she was evil…only she was not. Not exactly, and um, and uh, I handled it all very badly, including her. Her death is on my head, as is all the misery that she caused, whether real or imaginary, and so's everything else!"

"Coulson would disagree with you, as would the rest of your friends," Mace grew thoughtful, as Ophelia's corpse shattered on the floor, and the rest of the Playground's 'normal' look faded, leaving the two men standing in the building's burned-out wreck. "It took me a while to understand – let's suppose – but what you got isn't just tightly knit, it's exclusive. You're either in or you're not, and no compromises."

"That's not true!" Fitz protested hotly. "We're S.H.I.E.L.D.! The Strategic Homeland Intervention and Logistics Division!"

"Really? Gosh! And here I was thinking that that is what Stark's people were doing instead. That Peter Parker kid? He's really something!" Mace shook his head. "What you people have, or maybe had, I'm not sure, is a small, tightly knit, very efficient team of agents, but nothing more. As an agency, S.H.I.E.L.D. is gone and is not coming back, not in your incarnation, anyhow. I confess, my own take on you people had its' partisan goals, which may or may not have come true, but that's done for now, I'm dead for the moment, so my take on you is irrelevant right now…where were we?"

"The team that stays together triumphs together?" Fitz suggested meekly.

Jeffrey grimaced. "Yes it does. However, triumph can take on so many shapes…and it seems that building a new agency over the ashes of old isn't one of them, not for Coulson."

Jeffrey's grimace became a grin – and not a very nice one. "Phil _thought_ that he knew me – he was wrong. May does not know it, but she _does_ know me, in a manner of speaking. Maybe one day I'll have a complete hands-on encounter with her, because she is an amazing woman and, uh, very much to my taste." He smacked his lips. It was not a very nice sound.

Fitz shivered. Now he and Mace stood before a window but the view was not what Fitz was used to, but much more tropical with a sickly yellow sun in the sky. For some reason it reminded Fitz of the framework – somehow, it never got the weather patterns correct, but Leo just could not pinpoint his finger as to how precisely.

"You know, you don't sound very nice," he commented to Mace instead. "You don't sound like you, actually. Are you someone else?"

"No, I'm me," the former director of S.H.I.E.L.D. smiled bemusedly. "You just don't know me, I suppose. I had to be Jeffrey Mace, and I had _everybody_ fooled, even Melinda, and she _did_ know me, she just didn't know that Jeffrey Mace was I."

"…You're not making any sense," Fitz mumbled. Something was blazing through the sickly yellow sky, leaving behind a crystal-clear path of color – from white, to green, to orange. "Sir."

"…No, I'm not," Jeffrey admitted, as he and Fitz watched the new development with equally big curiosity. "This is unexpected. Agent Fitz? Our discussion took an unforeseen turn and is ending. Just… remember it, and remember that sometime in your future, it seems, you will have a _choice_."

"What choice?" Fitz yelled in irritation, and – woke up.

/ / /

"Oh, you're awake," Daisy commented from her position that was just close to Fitz's bed to be normal. "Good. Simmons sent me to wake you."

"I just woke up!" Fitz yelped. "And where's Simmons?"

"Doing the morning toiletries," Daisy wrinkled her nose.

"It's not yet quarter to seven in the morning!"

"And yet Phil and Mel are already getting us up," Daisy shrugged, "not to mention that you, for example, are up all by yourself."

"Yeah, I'm a big boy," Fitz grimaced, before catching a look on Daisy's face. "Um, did you even sleep?"

"A little," Daisy replied with a May-like monotone that would have left Melinda undoubtedly proud. "I just…have too much to think about, I guess."

"About Robbie?" Fitz hazarded a guess – and regretted it, as Daisy glared at him angrily, rather than forlornly.

"Don't you start as well!" she snapped. "I already had a 'discussion' about him with Simmons. Yes, maybe, if I asked him, he would have returned, but no. This is not about me, it is about S.H.I.E.L.D., and us in particular. Robbie is no longer a solitary asshole but a decent man, but – he has his own thing now, and he is good at it. I would rather that it be so, than him being stuck in S.H.I.E.L.D. with us!"

"Hey! We've got a good thing going!" Fitz pointed out, as he made a sweeping gesture at the room in their current hideout – a two-storey building with a basement and an attic, (the second floor), a kitchen, a bathroom, (well, two bathrooms actually), a living room, a bedroom and an office – i.e., a place that was just as suited for the agents as the hotel room where the agents during the entire mess with CyberTek had been.

"I stand by my point – compared to the burned-out mess that our HQ had become, this is still wonderful!" Fitz did not back down, however much common sense suggested that he did.

"If you say so," Daisy backed down instead, but Fitz did not feel that this was much of an achievement. "I'm not going to fight with you on this; it's just that, when I was away after the mess with Hive, I talked to some of the InHumans – the faction that wants to live in the U.S. peacefully and properly – and their leader feels that something big and bad is coming from space; they want to work with us, or at least have us restart the Avengers from whatever problems they are having, in order to succeed and save the planet." She paused. "And now we cannot really do either, can we? Last time we were like this, we were dealing with Garrett and CyberTek and Ward, but now we don't have even this-"

"What 'this'?"

"Purpose, Phil," Daisy turned to their leader, (however small their group now was; Piper, for example, had contacted them earlier this week and implied that she won't be returning to S.H.I.E.L.D. anytime soon, BTW). "We usually have a clear goal in mind, such as surviving or – fixing our own mess," she looked away. "Anyhow, what is the current plan? Because earlier me and Simmons got into an argument as which one of us has the better tushie, and we need an independent party to come to a resolution Want to be the judge?"

"Um," Phil blinked and looked around. "Mack-"

"It's Yo-Yo's; Yo-Yo is the winner," Mack said brightly as he pointed to the Latina's own derriere.

"Of course she is," Simmons peeped out of the bathroom. "Who would've doubted you? Anyhow, Coulson, what is the plan?"

"We're saving Lola!" Coulson replied brightly, stunning everyone into silence.

 _TBC_


	3. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

 _Disclaimer: see the first chapter._

Jemma Simmons was feeling the opposite of fun, whether it meant despondent or anything else. So far the retrieval of Lola was going down without a hitch, just as how Coulson planned it to be, and everyone was doing their part: Daisy and Yo-Yo were distracting the guards by beating the shite out of them, May and Coulson were sneaking in and retrieving Lola from her (!) containment unit, and her, Fitz and Mack were currently in the getaway vehicle – the new and improved version of Daisy's van, waiting for the others to make the signal.

"Here they come now!" Mack whispered to Fitz (and her), and indeed, there they were – Yo-Yo was using her superior speed to get Daisy into the vehicle, while Coulson was piloting Lola overhead, (May did not get to drive, again, and from the brief glimpse that Simmons caught of her, she was…displeased).

"Go, go, go!" Daisy shouted as soon as she and Yo-Yo got inside, and their van roared off. It still could not fly as Lola could, but it was a close match to the other car in speed, and so it sped! Leaving the pursuers, (U.S. soldiers, now led by Talbot's former aide, since the man himself was indisposed due to being shot by an LMD Daisy – hm. Maybe using Daisy, even alongside Yo-Yo, was not such a good idea after all), far behind.

Overall, (regardless of the oversight of using Daisy to be the frontal distraction), this was a success…so why Jemma, for one, didn't feel very satisfied about this?

Well, maybe it was because of Daisy – Jemma's InHuman friend had brought down her opponents with more relish than Jemma remembered her using on anyone who was not Hydra, or Watchdogs, or someone similar. This made Jemma wonder if Daisy was missing Robbie, but-

However, in fact, she and Daisy already had sort of a fight on this topic much earlier this morning – about Robbie Reyes, but really, it was more of the same that she and Daisy had fought before – about Daisy's place in S.H.I.E.L.D., only not. It _was_ about Reyes and whether or not he belonged in S.H.I.E.L.D. or not, and if not, then what?

Jemma did not like to admit it, but S.H.I.E.L.D. was having a personnel problem since ever – well, not 'ever', but for almost as long.

At first, it was not truly bad…only it was. The conflict and the confrontation with Gonzales' and his people was simply unnecessary, as far as Jemma could see. Whatever misgivings Gonzales and his people had towards Coulson and them, they still weren't ready, or willing to hurt anyone, so why was there subterfuge in the first place? Jemma did not know, did not care, but as far as she was concerned, this was when people started to die for real – agents, and on their watch. Grant Ward – and he was gone now, Jemma hoped, though after the incident with the framework all bets were off – had been only a symptom of the real problem, of the fact that people were dying, or simply leaving, and none of them, including Coulson, tried to do something about it for real. S.H.I.E.L.D. could defeat any external enemy, but internal problems were something else – and now they were just down to seven people, seven rather miserable people, and, yes, whomever Stark had running in place of the old Avengers. That, of course, had been a mess and a half – Earth's mightiest heroes duking it out in Europe between themselves like a bunch of drunken idiots – and in some way it was on S.H.I.E.L.D.'s head still. Coulson _had_ been able to keep the Avengers in check, and then he was gone – only not, he was quite back, and was currently flying away on Lola with May, while the rest of them were following them…not on foot, but on the ground, in their own getaway vehicle.

"Hey, Fitz!" Daisy called out from Jemma's side, as she and Yo-Yo finally got into the getaway car, (Yo-Yo provided the speed here, she was deceptively strong for her size, even if not supernaturally strong – as opposed to her speed). "You're being quiet today. Everything's fine?"

"Meh," Fitz replied. "I just had a weird dream last night, that's all."

"Oh. Was there anyone familiar in it?"

"Yeah. Mace."

There was a pause as everyone thought it over, regardless of their plight, (or perhaps because of it).

"Okay, didn't see this one coming," Mack commented idly, even as he steered the car, (he was the designated driver just because). "Why? He wasn't a bad man, he died on duty and because we failed to rescue him in the first place, but I didn't know that there was anything between you two-"

"There wasn't," Fitz snapped sharper than how he usually did with Mack. "And it was a weird, crazy dream anyhow, and it ended particularly oddly, with a meteor-"

Fitz didn't finish as an unidentified flying/falling object – an 0-8-4, basically – streaked across the sky, descending downwards, from right to left, until it landed, or rather – struck the ground, with a tangible crash and a small, localized earthquake, (according to Daisy, who was something of an earthquake expert, these days).

"Phil?" the aforementioned Daisy called out on her comm.-link. "Did you and May see that?"

"Yes," Coulson replied immediately. "We sure did."

"Are we going to check it out?"

"Yes," Coulson replied in the same curt manner, suggesting that he was angry, or at least – out of his comfort zone. "We are. We're still S.H.I.E.L.D., you know!"

Nobody argued.

/ / /

When they arrived…it took them some time to catch up to May and Coulson, this time. Lola still flew, while they had to drive on the ground, and the ground wasn't very smooth off the beaten path, and Daisy's van, while souped-up by Mack and Fitz, still wasn't a Jeep or an All-Terrain Vehicle, so there they were, catching up to Phil and Melinda at last, who were standing next to Lola, waiting for them.

All around them was silence and an empty prairie – their pursuers had not caught up to them, (or perhaps they had not been honestly trying, as Daisy and Yo-Yo had certainly beaten them up good). The wind was blowing softly now and rustling the tall prairie grasses, (Jemma thought that she could identify the species, but now was so the wrong time for this), but otherwise, there was nothing. In the west, the sun was setting, or rather – the evening dusk was lighter there, there was some indication of sunlight still, while in the other parts of the sky the darkness of night was making itself felt for real instead.

Some animals – probably ground squirrels or prairie dogs – were crying out to each other through short, whistling cries, but otherwise, there was no sign of life for real. There was the 0-8-4, though, and it resembled a short, roughly hewed pyramid in the Mesoamerican, rather than the Egyptian, style, made from some dark, probably even black, rock, but…

But, two things made Jemma doubt this observation, somewhat. First, it was a late evening, so colors were hard to discern now. And second, the 0-8-4 was glowing with a soft, yet powerful white light so maybe the rock was just dark by contrast instead.

"Did anyone ever see anything like this?" Yo-Yo called out from the back of the group – chronologically, she was still the junior one here, and thus with the least experience with alien artefacts.

"No, but it kind of reminds me of something – I just don't know what," Mack admitted. "Coulson?"

"Same here," the other man admitted. "Melinda?"

Melinda just shrugged. Silence returned with force and no one was willing to break it this time, as the 0-8-4 continued to glow, almost like some sort of a crudely misshapen candle, if candles would just glow and not burn.

"Now what?" Daisy looked around, uncomfortable. Several local rodents, maybe kangaroo rats or something similar, had poked out from the grasses around them and were staring at the agents with wide eyes and absolutely blank expressions – hopefully they were just ordinary rodents, rather than some half-alien hybrids, (or some aliens in disguise, period). "I can test it with my vibrations…," she did not sound too enthusiastic though.

"There's no need for this," Jemma said thoughtfully. "Leo?"

"Point," Fitz turned to Coulson. "Sir, can I borrow your cybernetic arm?"

"Fine," Coulson muttered, as he disengaged his arm and thrust it to the younger man. "Now what?"

Instead of replying, Fitz just took the limb and jabbed the 0-8-4 with it.

The light exploded.

 _TBC_


	4. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

 _Disclaimer: no one here belongs to me, but to Marvel™._

…When the light faded, Daisy found herself lying in her bed, her room, in the Playground, the calendar on the wall showing that it was…the past. More than two years in the past, in fact, only a few days after Carl Kreel had killed agent Hartley and most of her team, (except for Hunter), and Daisy herself shot down Donnie Gill to his watery death. (There were some rumors about him afterwards, but nothing concrete, and certainly no obvious indication that the young Gifted had survived). This hadn't been a good time in Daisy's life _or_ S.H.I.E.L.D.'s existence, but now Daisy knew that what came next was even worse – maybe much worse.

"So, Fitz seemed to have set-off an alien time machine," Daisy muttered to herself, as she quickly got dressed into her old uniform and entered the corridor, before pausing – now what?

The most sensible thing would be to go to the director's office, and talk to Melinda and Coulson about this – hopefully, Daisy was not the only one affected and/or brought back by the 0-8-4 in question…but what if she was?

Daisy shivered, and not from cold – the Playground actually used to have very good climate control; something was wrong. Well, something aside from the obvious, and that was even worse.

As Daisy aimlessly walked through the Playground's corridor, she came – accidentally or not – to the doorway, leading to vault D. It shouldn't have mattered, it didn't matter, Daisy _knew_ that she had settled her account with Ward back in the Framework, so there was no reason for Daisy to go into it, but – the doorway was already open, meaning that someone was already downstairs, meaning…what?

Silently cursing her curiosity, (or whatever), Daisy went inside and downwards.

/ / /

…Melinda May woke in her own room as well, and not unlike Daisy, she did not get flat-footed either. "Phil?" she spoke into her comm.-link: "Are things getting weird or is it just me?"

"No, it isn't just you," Coulson sounded just as discomfited as Melinda herself felt. "We really did go back in time – and we should've expected that; time machines _do_ exist, and Fitz had set one off, apparently."

"It was a 0-8-4, Phil!"

"An alien time machine, then."

"Not helping," Melinda grumbled. "Phil, where are we going from here? Once more, with feeling?!"

"That's an interesting question," Coulson commented, as he entered Melinda's room (and spoke to her directly – not via a comm.-link). "You have any specific ideas?"

"That's the thing Phil – I don't," Melinda muttered, as she looked away from her own comm.-link and directly at her – her friend. "Not this time. Things were going simply wrong for too long the first time around, and this time, I just do not want to repeat them. Anything can be better than what we have ended up with the first time!"

Phil blinked. "May, we 'ended up' with our friends – our family. We could have had it a lot worse-"

"Yes, Phil, but this isn't – it isn't what we wanted, or even Fury wanted," Melinda looked away. "You used to be S.H.I.E.L.D.'s field director, and I wasn't exactly stupid by the time when we had our reunion on the Bus. Fury entrusted us with S.H.I.E.L.D., and at the end? It was just us, and Mack, and Yo-Yo, and Tony Stark and his iron men on the other hand."

"'Just us and Mack and Yo-Yo'?" Coulson opted to remain difficult here. "Are you _sure_? You seem to have missed a person or three-"

"You know that I know that!" Melinda was not amused. "But they became family even before Mack and Yo-Yo did-!"

"Good point," Coulson agreed. "Well, since you are still back to 'all work and no play' setting, want to get Ward out of the way first?"

"…Honestly? I don't care," Melinda shrugged. "At this point in time he wasn't much of a threat, let's just hammer a deal with Maria and maybe Stark or Fury and move on to anyone or anything who is more important to S.H.I.E.L.D.'s well-being."

"Hill, or Stark, or Fury?" Coulson blinked in confusion. "Not his family?"

"If I remember correctly, the good senator thought that he could handle his brother. He was wrong. In addition, their youngest brother…I actually do not remember him that well or that fondly. He might have claimed to be grateful that you killed Ward in question, but he vanished very quickly soon after, and was not very helpful to us at all. I would rather not get involved with that family again, if we could help it. I am… quite suspicious that Ward was spying for us not just for Garrett and Hydra, but for Hill as well. Let us try to hand him over to Hill and see what happens instead – can't be worse than what happened the first time around…"

"Fine," Coulson gave in first. "We should run it by Daisy first…"

"Isn't she Skye, again? But that shouldn't be a problem – I understood that she had made her peace with Ward in that bloody computer program, somehow, so this shouldn't be too hard," Melinda looked away, thoughtful.

"Hey, May! Can you come out?" Lance Hunter called out from the corridor, outside, startling both her and Coulson – by now, they had rather forgotten about the Brit and his unpredictable attitude. "There's someone here that wants to see you!"

Feeling somewhat mystified, Melinda and Coulson went outside.

Several moments later Melinda's cry of 'Wu Ling May! What are you doing here?' shook the entire Playground, top to bottom.

/ / /

When Daisy descended into the vault D proper, Ward was already there. Or still there, she did not quite know what was the proper term, here and now. Unlike how she remembered, it the first time around, the big man was not listlessly sitting around, but pacing, and looking much more animate in general.

The feeling of wrongness came back to the young InHuman as she stared at Ward, and Ward stared back at her. Again, the look was different, Ward's hunger for her wasn't as evident in his gaze – it was still there, but it was now more subdued, and Ward currently didn't look as desperate as he did the first time around, but more like his regular self, complete with a plan…period. As a result…

"You finally made the beard work," was the first thing that Daisy said to him, (which was not what she wanted to say to him – not as a first thing, anyhow).

Grant stared at her, in a manner not unlike when she had confused parts of a gun and would say "bang" whenever she made a shot. "Really?" he asked quietly, instead of something scathing that she half-expected him to say. "You look good too. How life been treating you?"

"Lousy!" Daisy erupted, as whatever she wanted to say just exploded out of her without all the formalities or the politics that she wanted to add on top. "After you died, an alien monster named Hive took over your body and brainwashed me. Coulson and the others…didn't handle it very well; the Secret Warriors got broken and never came back…"

"I know; the dead know more than the living do, and while I'm grateful that I'm alive again, I must admit that that Kara and I were working on our own plan of coming back, and now it all is out the window. What happened?" Grant spoke in a neutral tone of voice.

"…You're an idiot," Daisy said, bitterly. "Here I am, trying to actually _apologize_ to you-"

"Why do you need to do that?" Grant stared at her, openly confused. "You've done nothing to me-"

"You're an idiot and asshole, how you chose Garrett over us, what you did to Simmons and especially to Fitz, never mind the Koenigs, but the way we all treated you, the way that _I_ treated you? It was not right either. I am sorry about it, and now that I know what it is like both being brainwashed and going through the withdrawal period, I'm sorry again, and I apologize again, and, and-"

"Stop, Skye," Grant muttered, looking, and sounding, just as miserable as Daisy herself felt. "Don't apologize to me, this isn't right. Whatever flaws that you had, whatever hardships, you're still the better person out of the two of us, I don't deserve your forgiveness-"

"You idiot!" Daisy snapped at him. "Don't you know? Understanding _is_ forgiveness!"

"…Since when?" Grant sounded honestly surprised.

"Since ever!" Daisy poked him in the chest and blinked. "Uh, where's the barrier?"

"Ask Trip," Grant pointed to the man in question. "He's here too, you know?"

"… Trip. Hey! Didn't mean to ignore you!" Daisy turned red. "How you've been? I can explain everything!"

"Hey, no harm no foul. And um, after I died I got promoted to S.H.I.E.L.D.'s guardian angel, so I was – sort of – in the know all this time?" Trip explained brightly, with his trademark smile.

Daisy blinked. "You got to be the guardian angel of S.H.I.E.L.D.? _Our_ guardian angel? Wow! No offense, but you sucked!"

"…I know," Trip looked away first. "Anyhow, here I am, trying to persuade Ward not to make his great escape from S.H.I.E.L.D., and-"

"Wait, you could physically escape all this time before?" Daisy looked up at Grant who just stared back at her with his trademark impassive stare. "You idiot, you, you, you-!"

"Yes, Skye?" Grant finally spoke, sounding faintly amused, for once.

"Again, I'm sorry," Daisy looked away. "We really should've handled this better."

"Yes, well-" Grant didn't finish, as some sort of a strange sound echoed through the vault. "Oh no. Cannot be."

He raced to the wall and pulled on it, revealing some sort of a secret tunnel, before vanishing down into it.

"What the-?" Daisy gaped and looked at Trip, whose look of honest worry did not inspire confidence in her.

"Skye? I would honestly like to say that I can explain everything, but I can't, not here and now," Grant spoke instead, as he returned to the vault, now flanked by several other people. "Also, Skye? Can I hide behind you? It seems that I'll be introducing the Cavalry to her potential son-in-law, so can I hide behind you if she decides to kill me?"

Daisy gaped. Next to her, Trip just burst into laughter, before cutting off abruptly as agent 33 appeared and shot him a look of death.

 _TBC_

AN – it may be confusing for now, but all will be explained in the following chapters.


	5. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

 _Disclaimer: see previous chapters._

 _Several days before (the events in the previous chapter)_

…When Jemma Simmons woke up and woke around, she realized that she was in Hydra, rather than in S.H.I.E.L.D. …as well as in the past – more than 2 years in the past, which meant, if her memory served her correctly, that Coulson, May, Daisy and etc. have already secured some sort of a ship from Hydra in the name of S.H.I.E.L.D., (while, sadly, killing Donnie Gill in the progress), but she hadn't been exposed to Raina yet. Well, so far so good, and hopefully Coulson will contact her, or Bobbi, some time soon and everything will go smoothly – again, or at least nowhere worse than how it was the first time around…

Jemma winced: just getting her mind around that entire sentence in her head made it hurt. Her head, that is – not good, of course, but not Hydra-level bad (i.e. the Faustus procedure) yet. Jemma did not intend for this to change – being brainwashed was not part of her plan – so she stiffened spine and the proverbial upper lip and went towards her designated workstation, hoping that not too many people in Hydra proper have also gone back in time and everything.

…Well, it seemed that Jemma didn't get her wish fully – no one was calling her out on being a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, but due to her increased field experience, she did sense some stares at her back…and not of the sexual sort either: Hydra just didn't do the entire casual human interaction even within itself, (when it wasn't pretending to be your friend and co-worker that is, **cough** ). Clearly, at least some people knew that something was afoot, but since no one was calling Jemma out on her part in it from the first time around, Jemma was not going to start it either. Instead, she shivered: she still did not believe in foreboding and insight as in pure and straightforward clairvoyance, but…

But nothing was going right lately – or did, or would go: Jemma was not so sure about the time tenses anymore. (Maybe there was a _good_ reason why Fury and the rest of the upper management of the _old_ S.H.I.E.L.D. did not allow time machine experiments on a regular basis back then). What she was certain about was that after a certain point in time, nothing went right for them anymore. Jiaying created a massacre on the Iliad. Fitz and Coulson failed to save Will or to prevent Grant from brining Hive back to Earth even if at expense of his own life. Jeffrey Mace died because of Radcliffe and Ivanov and AIDA and even the Watchdogs. S.H.I.E.L.D. was largely gone and what remained was ran by Stark now – and the Iron Man had his own problems; actually, _all_ of the Avengers in their entirety were having their own problems, and then Fitz hit an 0-8-4 and set it off and now they were in the past, and things…weren't so bad now as they would become in the future. Hm.

Jemma frowned. Some sort of a mental point, a logical breakthrough, was rising through the strata of her genius-level interest, but Jemma didn't really want to face it; rather, she would have preferred to do her daily work at Hydra even, but today it seemed was not her day – she walked right into Bobbi, (so lost in thoughts Jemma was):

"Oof!" she said as she stumbled backwards: she was badass but physically? Not as formidable as some of her friends, including Bobbi…

"Dr. Simmons, watch where you're going," Bobbi said tersely, only partially pretending to be a Hydra agent, as she was currently in some sort of a standoff against agent 33 and Yo-Yo.

Jemma felt more than slightly confused: when had Yo-Yo ever work for Hydra – and then agent 33 shifted her stance and looked at Jemma directly, and the young Englishwoman understood that Yo-Yo's new job position was the least of her worries. Unlike the first time around, agent 33 did not appear to have been brainwashed into a near cypher; her face was currently kind of bland and emotionless, but it was more of a 'trained agent' sort of blankness than anything brainwashed, and the look in her eyes was probably the coldest and the nastiest Jemma had ever seen aimed in her direction, including AIDA's.

"Um, hello?" she smiled weakly at agent 33, who opened her mouth slightly and said something in Spanish, very quietly that Jemma couldn't understand her even if she did speak Spanish, and she didn't, not very good anyhow.

"Help?" she looked back at Bobbi. "Um, what is going on here?"

"This is agent 33 of S.H.I.E.L.D." Bobbi's own face was carefully controlled and blank. "She got captured few days ago and had been taught that compliance is rewarded."

(Agent 33 shifted her gaze back to Bobbi, and the bigger woman ignored it…about as well as Jemma herself did: the Latin-American woman's hate was almost tangible; not even Ward had ever stared at them like that; actually…)

Jemma shook her head, clearing away the mental cobwebs and focused back at Bobbi. "And, uh, her friend?"

"This isn't her friend, her name is Elena Rodriguez – she is a daughter of Horton, who does work for Dr. Whitehall and Hydra," Bobbi replied calmly. "Technically, he's _agent_ Horton, but he hates being called that, actually."

"Is he good?" Jemma frowned, trying to make sense: the world was making less and less of it, even by S.H.I.E.L.D.'s standards.

"He is one of the strongest gifted agents in Hydra," Bobbi's reply was matter-of-fact. "He really is."

"Oh." Jemma blinked and shifted back to ask Yo-Yo if this was true, and if it was then how come it never came up in all the time when she was at S.H.I.E.L.D., and what the Hell was going on here, when unfortunately she made eye contact with agent 33 _again_ and kind of froze: the gaze of the other woman was that hateful.

(Instinctively, Jemma remembered the day when she and Fitz declared agent 33 officially free from Hydra programming – back then the other woman was anything but hateful; rather, she was grateful and cheerful and nice – and then she died and everything began to go wrong…)

"Sorry," Jemma muttered, forgetting briefly about the here and now and how real life for agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. "This wasn't fair to you, was it?"

Something shifted in Kara Palamas' gaze; the black ice in it seemed to have cracked – and then new people arrived on the scene. Most unfortunately, one of them was Dr. Whitehall. Almost as bad, another one of them was Brock Rumlow. Naturally, all four of the people involved stood at attention at once, even though as Dr. Whitehall said that it was not necessary. He did not say that they could stay 'at ease' either, though…

"So, ladies," the Hydra head said with a small smile, (that was fully devoid of humor or warmth), "what we were discussing here, hmm?"

"…Dominic Fortune?" Jemma said the first thing, or rather – name, that came into her mind: ever since Whitehall had died the first time around in the alien temple in Puerto Rico, she forgotten how terrifying that man in question could be. Hence, the impromptu answer.

"Ha! That's a good one!" Rumlow guffawed and everyone stiffened even more: no one wanted to be caught on any side of the man named Crossbones ever. "Which poor sap got caught on _that_ Ponzi scheme?"

"My ex-husband, maybe," Bobbi spoke quietly, much more subdued than Jemma has ever heard her speak. "He, supposedly, made some sort of arrangement with the man…"

"Idiot. Poor idiot, I remember him, but still – poor idiot," Rumlow shook his head. "No one deserves that sort of dismissal, not even him. Dominic Fortune never delivers; in fact, the word on the street is that he doesn't exist, so anyone who tries to 'make a deal' with him is a shmuck!" He laughed again. It did not sound very funny. Jemma in particular wanted to crawl somewhere, shrivel and die, because the last time she heard about Bobbi and Lance, (the 'first' time around) they were supposedly on their way to recovery exactly via Dominic Fortune, so, um? Oops?

"Agent Morse. Agent Rumlow," Whitehall's voice now sounded completely unamused, cut and dry. "It's nice to see you in such good humors, but-"

"Dr. Whitehall?" And, apparently, it was really Jemma's day to go down the memory lane the _full experience_ as Sunil Bakshi appeared on the scene as well. "Your appointment is here."

"Indeed?" Whitehall turned around and looked at the couple behind Bakshi. "Mr. Werner. What a pleasant surprise to see you here without your father or that fraud List. Who is your new companion, though?"

"Wu Ling." Whitehall's new interlocutor also sounded familiar to Jemma, but she couldn't pinpoint him exactly – he sounded different too, also kind of…young? "Dr. Whitehall, thank you for meeting us-"

"How could I not? Carmichael sounded so insistent," Whitehall's voice sounded mildly curious but everyone held their breath. "What'd happen to his partner, anyhow?"

"He didn't comply; he got to be a conversation piece instead," the mysterious Werner replied as he apparently produced something and showed it to Whitehall.

Whitehall chuckled. It was surprisingly a rich, full sound and it scared the Hell out of Jemma; (from the corner of her eye she saw that agent 33 had turned pale as well and by agent standards looked just as frightened as Jemma herself felt. On some point Jemma felt reassured, on another – more like self-disgusted).

"Mr. Werner, you have pleasantly surprised me!" Whitehall did sound exactly like that. "You have done well. So, what exactly did you want to ask me for as opposed to your uncle Gideon?"

"I want to have a team of my own," Werner spoke carefully now, cautiously. (Jemma could not blame him – until Coulson killed him again, Whitehall was and remained one scary man). "I believe that I want these people."

"Is this a question or a statement?"

"A statement, but Dr. Whitehall, we all know that the final call is yours."

"True," Whitehall smiled again – this time his smile was even worse. "Why those people?"

"My man Kebo knows them and I think that they are just the people I can use."

"And what does Gideon Malick think about it?"

"I'm trying to put some distance between uncle Gideon, just as I'm trying to in regards to my father…" Werner trailed away.

"A most commendable course of action – regarding your father. He is not an idiot, but _he_ listens to List, and _List_ got his doctorate from a cereal box, the great fraud! And as for Gideon…do not worry. He actually _knows_ his place and will stick to it." 'Or else' was not spoken, but everyone heard it loud and clear all the same. "Well, your request is approved. You got your team. 33, Rodriguez? You are a part of it, so get moving. Everyone else – dismissed."

Jemma did not need to be told twice. Neither did Bobbi, (nor anyone else). They all scattered.

/ / /

"Jemma!" Bobbi hissed as soon as they were out of Whitehall's sight (and hearing) and in some private office. "What is going on? Have you made some sort of a time machine-"

"Not exactly," Jemma grimaced. "Fitz has actually set off an 0-8-4 and here we are-"

Jemma did not finish, as Rumlow soundlessly appeared from behind Bobbi and with a hearty "Yo! Boobs!" grabbed her by one of them and spun her around. "Let's consider this my payment for the quickie! Good luck!" He thrust something into Bobbi's hands, flipped her on the nose – hard – and left.

"Bobbi?" Jemma said meekly. "What is it?"

"We need to get out of here – fast," Bobbi showed her an article from an iPad. "When _Whitehall_ sees that, he'll hit the fan with _someone_!"

Jemma stared. "Malick is merging with Stark? Bobbi, what is going on? What has Fitz _done_?"

"I don't know," Bobbi said briskly as she began to drag Jemma down yet another corridor. "But we need to get out and tell… Coulson." She looked more defeated than Jemma ever remembered her seeing. "Jem, will anything ever go right?"

"I don't know," Jemma looked away, before remembering something else that was possibly even more important. "Bobbi? How _are_ we going to get to the U.S.?"

"I have an idea how," the other woman replied. "Oh. Hello, Mr. Bakshi. How are you today?"

"Having a sense of déjà vu," the man replied forlornly. "It's strange, really-"

Jemma knocked him out.

Bobbi stared at her. "It's my part of the improvised plan," Jemma told flatly the other woman. "Now where's our ride out of here?"

/ / /

"…You never told me that your getaway plan was to stow on Werner von Strucker's Hydra-cargo plane! Or whatever this thing is!" Jemma hissed to Bobbi some time later as they have done exactly that.

"Well, you never told me that you wanted to smuggle Bakshi with us!" Bobbi hissed back. "Now hush, I don't hear what they're saying to each other!"

 _TBC_


	6. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

 _Disclaimer: see previous chapters._

…When Mack came to his senses…his surroundings were completely different: he was back in the S.H.I.E.L.D., the old new S.H.I.E.L.D., and Lance Hunter was staring at him without any suspicion or mistrust that the shorter man used to give him for a while, (after Gonzales' coup of the Playground actually worked – to a point). Rather, Hunter appeared to be almost happy to see him, which…was something that Mack could live with, actually, so there.

"Mack, what has happened?" Hunter asked quietly. "Did we go back in time or what?"

"Yes, we did," Mack nodded sagely. "Fitz have set-off a 0-8-4 – don't ask."

"Why? Was it so bad?"

Mack thought this over. "Yes," he finally confessed. "Ward…he managed to bring Malick's alien back to Earth, even at cost of his own life, and the damn monster almost destroyed humanity before we blew it with a nuke in space instead. Lincoln died. Quake went MIA for a while, Coulson resigned, Jeffrey Mace took over S.H.I.E.L.D. Some Russian yahoo took over the Watchdogs and teamed with a scientist, Holden Radcliffe, and captured us all in a computer framework. More people died, including Mace. We got out, Radcliffe died, but his last creation, an LMD named AIDA, became some sort of a super-InHuman instead and killed more people alongside that Russian bloke. We killed them, but it was down to just us, basically – S.H.I.E.L.D. as we, including you and Bobbi knew it, was gone. And then we found the 0-8-4 and Fitz set it off…" Mack trailed away seeing how Lance just stared at him. "What?"

"You sound insane, you know that?"

"Yes, well, don't care," Mack muttered. "I've met my daughter and lost her, again, in that bloody computer, and now I need to do something quickly, or I'll lose Elena as well. Can you help?" he added belatedly, remembering that Hunter had proven to be a more than capable agent himself once the mess with the Iliad was resolved, (though to no one satisfaction, but still).

"Why, Mack, thank you for that heartfelt plea," the other man looked kind of cross himself. "I missed this friendly banter between us after the burn notice finale of our careers at S.H.I.E.L.D."

"You know, Coulson was going to get you out, you chose the other option yourselves-"

"Yes, and that one's largely on me, not on Bob," Hunter spoke with more seriousness than Mack had ever heard the other Brit to speak. "It's just that things weren't walking – I mean _working -_ between us and Coulson all that well by then; after Bob got rescued from Ward and 33 I assumed that Coulson and his old guard will trust Bob for sure; but they never did." He looked away. "And yes, I remember that Bob got kidnapped because she gave-up 33 over to Hydra in the first place, but still…"

"Well, this time both she and Ward are still alive," Mack pointed out as the two of them walked through the Playground's corridors (nowhere in particular, but they were looking busy, so the others did not bother them), "maybe you can talk to them instead? First, before anything else?"

"Well," Lance began but got interrupted:

"Excuse me, but where, here, can I find my mum?"

Hunter and Mack blinked, realized that they got engrossed in their conversation (and their thoughts), and saw a mini-May standing before them, a teenage version of the Cavalry, with a very Melinda-like look on her face. "Ahem! Are you hearing me?" she continued, also in a rather Melinda-like manner.

"Sorry," both men instinctively apologized – the teenager's similarities to Melinda were probably to blame. "Is your mom Melinda May?"

"Yes," the teenager continued to look stroppy. "Where can I find her?"

"At this time of the day, since she's here – in her room," Mack answered on his own this time.

"Can you show me where it is?"

"Sure," Mack exchanged a look with Lance Hunter and together the two men led the newcomer to the Playground to her mom.

…Several moments later the entire Playground shook from Melinda's shout:

"Wu Ling May! What are you doing here?"

"It's complex, but visiting you is a part of it," Melinda's teenage version matched the original look for look. "Mum! What has happened?! We used to be a family, remember? Why did it all go _wrong?_ "

"Wu Ling," all of fighting drained from Melinda at these words. "It's- I- It was Bahrain, you know? I killed a child there-"

"Yes, and while dad had his flaws, he would've helped you – professionally too, because it was his job," meanwhile, the teenage version of her was just getting started, it seemed. "So, why not? It's not because of him, is it?" she pointed at Coulson, who blinked and looked as if he would rather be not here, for a change.

"No," Melinda shook her head, before giving Coulson a flat look. "Sit."

"…Okay," Coulson muttered and complied. "And, uh, also, young lady? From what your mother has told me, your father has broken up with her first."

There was a pause as both women stared at him with similarly enigmatic stares, before switching back to each other. "Really? Dad had? He never told me that!"

"Who never told you that?"

"Dad! When I was meeting his new wife and everything…" Wu Ling looked away first. "I really was an accident, wasn't I?"

"…Who told you that?" Melinda sounded genuinely berserk here, for a change.

"No one – I sort of figured it out myself…" the teenage May didn't finish, as her mother very firmly hugged her and told her that it was a lie, and-

"What are you doing here, for real, Wu Ling?"

"A number of things, but meeting you was one of them," the teenager admitted, as she unobtrusively looked at her watch. (Now that the initial rush of her physical similarity to Melinda was wearing off, Coulson could realize that Melinda's daughter was dressed quite sharply, even moreso than someone like her father could afford – and Andrew Garner had been a fairly rich man on one hand and well-connected on the other…) "Mom, what has happened? Where had the time gone? _Literally_?"

"A co-worker of ours set-off an alien device, and here we are," Coulson decided to play along.

"Why? Hydra?" the questions were both innocent and not, but before either of the adults could answer, Grant Ward looked in, followed by Daisy (or was it Skye?), and several other people:

"Melinda? A word? And please don't kill me!"

"What?" Melinda glared. "How did you-"

"This is Werner, your potential son-in-law," Ward smiled, as he all but hid behind Daisy (or was it Skye?), and produced a younger man, about Wu Ling's age or so, (i.e. still somewhat in his teens, age-wise).

Melinda froze, left her daughter, and walked to the young man in question – after which she proceeded to do everything to him, short of lifting him into the air, (off the ground), and twirled him around for a better look, until reaching a final conclusion:

"He's Eurotrash!" she yelled at her mini-self in a voice that was almost a wail.

"He's not!" Wu Ling yelled back just as fiercely.

There was a pause, as no one really knew how to break the silence following this exchange of opinions. Finally, Coulson did it:

"Okay, Ward, you got our attention. Start explaining."

Ward exhaled, not looking very happy himself, and began.

 _TBC_


	7. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

 _Disclaimer: again, most of the characters are not mine._

Lance Hunter was never the cleverest man around. Oh, he was not stupid, far from it – he got his intelligence, he graduated from the military academy that his father has sent him after school – the Hunters' were a primarily military family after all – and if he hadn't met Bobbi Morse, agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., he probably would've reached a sufficiently high rank, appropriate for a member of his family, and lived a…predictable and boring life, really.

…Lance Hunter hated the very thought of it, so when Bobbi Morse, agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., appeared in his life and persuaded him to betray his homeland for S.H.I.E.L.D., (yes, S.H.I.E.L.D. did do that, when it was run by Fury, it didn't always play nice with the governments of countries of the world), she…didn't have to work very hard to persuade him – and Lance Hunter never regretted joining her and S.H.I.E.L.D. in his life. It had its' vicissitudes, it was insane, and Hunter never regretted going down this road.

Only now this road seems to have gone around the bend somewhere, (or rather somewhen, but Hunter actually had a very good idea of 'when', so now he was more interested in 'where', for one, and in 'why' and 'how' also), so here he was, looking at Grant Ward, this great big jackass, holding court.

Only the taller man was not doing that, but rather – looking not very happy at being in the spotlight at all.

"I don't have a sales pitch, Coulson," he looked at the current director of current S.H.I.E.L.D., (and admittedly not Hunter's favorite person at the moment either, or even for a long while), "what I have is CyberTek. My people and I will run it…period. You and S.H.I.E.L.D. want to be in or whatever, that's up to you."

"How generous, especially since we already own it…" Melinda trailed away.

"No," Grant shook his head. "You don't. For whatever reasons, Fury left it go after I got captured and John died, and Malick's branch of Hydra snapped it up via Ian Quinn and other intermediaries. Then Malick himself died, from what I understood, so there's that – except that we're in the past now, Malick is alive, his family is alive, and Quinn's arrangement with Werner has probably ended by now."

There was a pause, and the younger man froze. "Oh – kriff!" he swore. There was a pause. "It's from Star Wars?" he suggested bravely, (but not quite pulling it off).

"Meaning what?" Coulson frowned: no one at S.H.I.E.L.D. remembered Ian Quinn fondly, (though what did happen to him after Garret died?), or Gideon Malick and his family for that matter.

"Allow me," Trip muttered quietly, as he took out a tablet and began to sift through news. "Okay, first things first. This is Gideon Malick and his family…bleep."

Coulson took a good look at the news: Gideon Malick and his daughter have made peace with their estranged wife and mother, and there was a renewal of vows, and Stephanie Malick was engaged to one Mr. Quinn, and-

"Phil," Melinda said quietly, as the man in question just hit his head on a table to make himself feel better. "You did it again, it seems."

"He does it often?" Grant asked, his voice carefully controlled. "I thought that those of stories of him in the old S.H.I.E.L.D. were just that – stories."

"No, there was fire with all of that smoke," Melinda exhaled. "What are we missing?"

"I was supposed to marry Stephanie Malick – Gideon and father have arranged it beforehand. But I did not. And I will not! And thank goodness for that?" Werner finished bravely under Melinda's gaze - almost.

"Good boy," she pinched his cheek. "But, Wu Ling? We're still going to talk."

"Fine," the younger May muttered.

Silence fell.

"Now what?" Daisy asked, clearly not sounding very happy with the direction in which the discussion was taking.

"I've no idea – ask Trip: he was S.H.I.E.L.D.'s guardian angel the first time around," Kara showed Daisy her teeth in a smile-like manner.

Everyone just looked at Trip during _this_ pause.

"Man, you got to be our guardian angel? Man, you sucked!" Lance said helpfully, "but on this topic, um – director? What the game plan this time?"

"We're stopping Whitehall and the rest of Hydra," Coulson spoke quietly. "It isn't going to be easy, but-"

"But we know now Whitehall's endgame beforehand, he's going for the Obelisk," Bobbi matched Coulson's vocal volume. "It shouldn't be too hard either."

"I'm going for a pessimistic approach, and-" Coulson paused. "Morse. Before we all fall to infighting and whatever else, want to clarify as to what is going on with you, Mack, Gonzales and co.? Can we make peace with him before Li Shi? And everything?"

"We should," Daisy replied this time. "Jia is my mother and everything, but the bloodbath on the ship was her doing. We have to prevent her – this time, and stopping the entire InHuman catastrophe in the bud."

"…Fine, but I'm still getting my wings," Wu Ling said crossly.

"Excuse me?"

"Wu Ling may be May Mk IV, but she's also Garner's daughter; after one of your family's fun-fun-fish pills of-fun, she sprouted wings and, well, transformed," Grant replied instead.

"Firstly, Mk IV?" Melinda glared at their former ally.

"Well, at first we thought that she was Mk III, but after learning that there was a great-grandmother out there somewhere, we promoted her to Mk IV instead," this time Grant didn't back down.

"Great-grandmother?" Daisy blinked. "What? How?"

"Don't ask," Melinda muttered. "I cannot answer this question myself."

"…Right," Bobbi decided to break the silence this time. "So, uh, we won't try to have some sort of a civil war this time?"

"No," Coulson muttered, "and we'll try to prevent Stark and Rogers from having one either – but, because it's Stark and Rogers, I cannot guarantee anything."

"Okay," Bobbi shifted and looked at Kara Palamas.

Kara shifted with an almost reptilian gaze and looked back.

Silence came back - vigorously. "This is ridiculous," Morse muttered, two spots of pink on her cheeks. "Palamas, I'm sorry-"

"About what? Him?" Kara pointed at Hunter.

"Oh. You remembered that too?" Bobbi looked away first.

"By now I remember everything," Kara snapped, "so since we're not going to go there, let's drop it."

"…Just for the record? If Hill remembers everything that went down the first time around, she probably remembers this too," May commented, confusing everyone further.

"…You told Hill?" for the first time since Fitz's reset, if ever, Kara appeared to be hurt with Ward's actions.

"Would you rather have Morse and Hunter adopt your daughter instead?" Ward did not back down.

"…Good point," Kara looked away first, glaring at Morse all the same. "I still hate you, incidentally."

This time, Morse just pursed her lips and said nothing.

"…Okay," Coulson exhaled. "Melinda? What is everyone else is talking about? Including you, incidentally?"

Melinda exhaled and began to explain.

 _TBC_


	8. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

 _Disclaimer: see previous chapters._

…For her own part, the Cavalry was clearly _not_ enjoying being the center of attention at all; actually, she was clearly upset, pissed off, annoyed, irritated and etc. with everyone present here, but Coulson's latest comment really hit her on a sore spot.

"You know?" she told the latter in her trademark monotone, which implied that _someone_ was going to get it…eventually. "No, you don't know, I see. Right. How did it go? Morse over there had a relationship with Palamas, but eventually married Hunter and had a child with him-"

"Mason isn't mine, incidentally, but his," Hunter pointed at Ward, who shook his head:

"If this was true, Morse and I would've been married since then, as her SO had intended," he replied patiently. "This was certainly the end game, and I didn't object to it, and neither did Morse, until she met the man with the magical penis over here, but Mason isn't _my_ son – he's _my SO's_ son."

"…How did that happen?" Coulson spoke in a numb voice.

"Don't know," Grant muttered. "For the last few years of his life John was completely impotent for biological reasons – the tissues were failing all over the body, you see, it was only cybernetics that kept him alive – once the FitzSimmons knocked them out and Raina injected her concoction, it was all over."

"You know-" Simmons snapped, but Grant met her eye-to-eye, without flinching:

"I remember. However, it was not John – whatever that had risen in his body after that, it was not him. You won," he told the FitzSimmons, who did not look very happy about this revelation themselves.

"This was never about winning, this was about you having a proper chance, a proper choice-"

"For years before he met you, this man was parasitized by Garrett – it would've taken more than a single action, no matter how heroic, to fix it. It took time," Kara explained helpfully, with a sharp and humorless smile of her own.

"You died," the FitzSimmons snapped as one.

"Yes, well," Trip spoke up, "due to reincarnation and everything, Grant did enough times to be a person of importance down there, and even own a very substantial property, among other perks."

"…Of course you do," Skye gave her former SO a look. "You always land on your feet, don't you?"

"It took me a lot of time to build all that," Grant did not back down this time. "Many turns on the reincarnation cycle. Many lives. Many deaths. The one that Coulson gave me was definitely one of the nastiest ones, though."

"Yes, well, you deserved it," Coulson looked away.

"True, I did tear down all of your moral landscapes and values," Grant agreed easily, (in a manner that was reminiscent of John Garrett at his worst), "so we're even? And can we get back to Kara and Morse?"

"You did _not_ -"

"You _crushed_ my heart – trust me as a professional killer, you _have_ -"

"Right, and back to agent 33," Melinda snapped, before things could get too insane, in a morbid way. "She was going to marry agent Morse-"

"Yes," Kara nodded.

"But they were both women-"

"So?" everyone looked at the FitzSimmons, who blushed.

"Sorry," they muttered. "We kind of gotten unused to it-?"

"Right, and who was mounting whose shapely flanks ever since I came back after Lincoln died?" Daisy gave them an evil eye, (after usually being the one to clean it all up). "Want to try again?"

The FitzSimmons blushed harder.

"Sure," Kara spoke up, startling everyone. "Let's see, how it went. After Bobbi ditched me for Hunter and his magical penis for good, I tried to steal him from her instead. It…could have worked, so Morse buried me in Hydra and did not stop until I died – and applied to adopt my daughter for just such an occasion. Only Ward already explained everything to Hill, so that failed, as so many other of Bobbi's _brilliant_ schemes."

"Yes, and because she assumed that we already knew about it before everything, she tore us a new one, and because my relationship with her was never good, it all just fell apart after that…and Coulson never connected the dots to pick up the pieces," Melinda finished crossly. "Did we leave anything out?"

"Well, Mason may not be Hunter's kid, but Therese sure is," Trip added 'helpfully', "and the man doesn't even know it."

There was another pause. "You're the worst angel that I've ever met," Grant told him conversationally, while Kara turned pale, gasped for air like a fish out of water and generally grabbed him to keep herself steady, "and Kara? Do you want me to try to make him apologize or should I just start killing him?"

"…The Hell?" Hunter replied instead. "The Hell? Barbara? What is he talking about? And May-?" However, Morse just sat there, looking as white as a marble statue and just about as lively.

"…I tried to fix it all privately, family-like," Grant added to no one in particular. " _That_ didn't work, and May tricked into killing Kara on top of it. So let us now try this approach. How is it working?"

"Ward? You might've had the right intentions, but you're still an ass," May matched him tone for tone.

"Same to you. I _didn't_ destroy any of your moral landmarks and values – I reckon that you have done this to yourself already."

"…Yes," Melinda looked away. "A long time before I met any of you on the Bus or beyond…"

"Mum!" Wu Ling, who had been largely forgotten by most of the people present, made way over to the older woman and hugged her.

Melinda did not burst into tears…as loudly as her daughter had. Everyone else just looked away.

"…So, this was how things went in the old S.H.I.E.L.D.?" Daisy asked, trying not to look too uncomfortable, (but not quite succeeding).

"Yes," Coulson did not sound too happy himself. "S.H.I.E.L.D. was a great place, with great people, but it had its' flaws too. Fury has assigned me to fix them…it didn't work, especially the first time around…" he just dropped onto the table.

"Well, never fear – Trip your guardian angel is here," Ward muttered sarcastically. "And did he tell you that when the Creator has assigned him to that post, he looked _exactly_ as Nick Fury did, so much so that Trip has never stopped wondering just which man out of two had actually given him the job?"

"Really?" Coulson perked back up, some. "Trip, don't worry – many agents have confused the two over the years, including, well, me, back when I was your age!"

"…I hate you all," Trip muttered.

 _To be continued…_


	9. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

 _Disclaimer: see the first chapter for details._

There was another pause that no one was sure how to break. "Do we even want to talk to each other anymore?" Daisy muttered quietly. "Maybe we should just go to Puerto Rico and lay our ambush for Whitehall there instead. I do not know if he is aware that time has slid back, but I doubt that he will be deterred by this – he will still want the Obelisk."

"Point," Coulson rubbed his nose, paused, and decided to make some internal call, it seems. "Are you going to go down with Raina this time?"

"I don't know," Daisy did not look her surrogate father in the eye. "Maybe we should focus on stopping Whitehall instead-"

"Good idea!" Werner spoke up suddenly, startling everyone else: the younger man was quiet, lately. "After the Boss man here was gone on his own personal mission, to Maveth and the land of the dead, Rumlow came around, with his lady friend named Synthia, and asked if we wanted to rejoin the Hydra. We demurred, in part because he didn't push, because otherwise we were buggered, but he also admitted that Horton and Alice didn't join their corner of Hydra because, possibly, Whitehall survived Puerto Rico; it's just that his – stolen alien organs kicked into overdrive, turning him into some sea monster that couldn't survive on dry land. Maybe this time we can do more than just shoot him? Maybe burn the corpse or douse it with acid, or something?"

"…I want to refute just on principle, but somehow I can't," Coulson gave the much younger man a pointed look. "Mostly, mind, because this _isn't_ the most outlandish suggestion that I've heard here. Does anyone have any counterpoints?"

"S.H.I.E.L.D. _doesn't_ have any flamethrowers currently at hand, and right now they cannot be easily acquired, not by us," Bobbi shrugged. "What we currently _have_ at hand is lime – quicklime. Maybe we can use it instead of acid?"

"…Why do we have quicklime at hand?" Daisy could not help but to ask.

"Because this _isn't_ the first time we agreed that we need to go an extra mile in getting rid of a corpse," Bobbi's reply was matter of fact. "And quicklime is good at that sort of thing."

Daisy looked away first. Jemma decided that she hated that. The first time around, after the mess with Hive was over, and Lincoln died alongside the alien space monster, and Daisy had run away and came back very reluctantly, she had come back harder. Scarier. More mature. More formidable. With a gaze that was almost X-ray-like in its intensity and with an air of unflappability that made Jemma miss the old Skye – and now they seemed to have re-acquired her again, and Jemma…was now missing the new-old Daisy, which was just bizarre.

"Jem, are you okay?" Fitz spoke quietly from his position next to her.

"I don't know," Jemma looked down at the floor. "Fitz, we've gone back years in time. What kind of question is that?"

"Good point, and from what I understood, we're living in some sort of a Fitz-world now," Kara echoed from the other side of Simmons. "So, what can you do, Leo? Turn off world's entire gravity with a thought?"

"Wha-, wha-, I never-, I never did something like that, I _cannot_ do something like that – _anything_ like that, I mean!" Fitz sputtered. "I just- it is just, it is all Jeffrey Mace's fault!" he finished with a wail; judging by the faces of the others, he was not making much sense, again, and in a bad manner as well.

"Jeffrey Mace?" surprisingly, Ward sounded genuinely thoughtful here. "I've heard this name; so'd Morse, I bet. What about him? What did he do?"

"Um, ran S.H.I.E.L.D. after you died, and Lincoln died, and many other agents got transformed into Primitives?" Fitz spoke cautiously. "Did a strange job of it, too, until Radcliffe and Aida killed him in the framework-"

"Leo? Leo, slow down and start again," Bobbi spoke clearly and calmly, doing her best not to spook the height-challenged Scotsman even further. "Start with – Dr. Radcliffe, if not Jeffrey Mace."

"Dr. Radcliffe joined us after he helped us defeat Hive," Fitz did just that. "At first he was more of an ally than a proper agent, but then Mace had him join us for real. Then he betrayed us all to the Watchdogs for the sake of the Darkhold-" He saw the faces of Grant, Tripp, Bobbi, Kara, and stopped babbling. "What?"

"Where to begin," Grant muttered. "For starters, Jeffrey Mace isn't Mace, technically. He is a very old, completely non-human alien shapeshifter, who's, like twelve times stronger than I am, and ten times smarter."

"He's also a father to many children, and Alveus-Hive was one of them," Tripp echoed. "He – Jeffrey Mace – took over S.H.I.E.L.D in order to have his revenge on all of you. Alveus was his child, one of his lesser children, but still one of his. As far as aliens go, Jeffrey Mace was a bad husband, but a good father. He had a harem-"

"Oh, you think this is what he meant when he appeared to me in a dream and said that he wanted to know Melinda better?" Leo asked sheepishly.

…If looks could kill, Melinda would have disintegrated the younger agent _immediately_. Jemma opened her mouth, but Mack interrupted her:

"Hey, I remember that…in a manner of speaking. You mentioned him on the morning when we went to rescue Lola, right?"

"Yes," Fitz nodded. "I think that Mace and I saw the alien pyramid arriving in my dream, and he told me that I will have to make a choice in the future-"

"Leo," Grant's voice was not mocking, it was kind, and that made it worse. "You _are_ a genius, we know, but so's Mace, and if you specialize in engineering and the like, _his_ field of specialty were politics and the like; you're dealing with a…entity who is as intelligent as you are and is much more experienced. You might just lose fair and square, and then everyone is buggered, because our last line of defence in these matters is Tripp, and he sucks."

"…" Tripp shot Grant a look. "You know?" he said coldly. "I was-"

"Can we talk about something else? Or someone else?" Skye said brightly.

"Okay, the entity that you knew as Dr. Radcliffe is gender-fluid for the lack of a better term and they perceived to be a woman most of the time, rather than a man," Grant complied easily. "Hopefully, no one had slept with him/her/them, right?"

Everyone looked at Fitz again. "Oh come one!" He wailed. "I didn't! _We_ did not! There was only Ophelia- I mean AIDA-"

"Wait. Ophelia? You mean Ophelia Sarkissian? The highest-ranking female operate of Hydra?" Bobbi stared at Fitz. "The self-proclaimed Madame Hydra? Mind you, she's nowhere strong enough to challenge Whitehall, but she's still formidable…what?" she stopped, noticing the strange looks from Coulson, Daisy, Melinda and some others.

"Leo," Jemma said quietly. "Did you bring O-ph-e-l-i-a back from the dead _again_? You-! You-!"

"Jemma! This-! That-!" Fitz sputtered. "Oh Lord, what have I done?"

"We have no idea," Kara spoke, not meanly, after an exchange with Ward. (In Spanish, so that Daisy, even though she had eavesdropped, did not understood a word). "Everyone? Welcome to FitzWorld, it seems."

…By the slightest of margins, Fitz _did not_ burst into tears.

 _To be continued…_


	10. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9**

 _Disclaimer: see the previous chapters._

As the impromptu meeting began to die down, Coulson began to feel…something. He was not sure exactly what it was, but judging by how things were going – they were beginning to be resolved – the feeling just might have been satisfaction.

Coulson had a lot of reservations about how things have went down back the first time around, and while they have won most of the battles, technically, they had lost the war: when the latest alien 0-8-4 landed, S.H.I.E.L.D. was down to, technically, seven people and that was certainly _not_ what Fury expected from him, (and Melinda, and others). True, Fury's instructions had been rather vague by themselves – "rebuild S.H.I.E.L.D. and restore it to its' old glory" – which is to say, Fury was clear about what he wanted Phil and the others to accomplish, but no specific directions, instructions or anything like that. Just – go wild.

Coulson hated that. He knew that at a certain point, his reputation had been that of a stuffed suit, and a yes-man to Fury, but the truth was that he did like to follow orders, especially Fury's orders… Right. Where were they in terms of - everything?

"Excuse me," Piper Vasquez – apparently, she was an S.H.I.E.L.D. agent once again – looked into the impromptu conference room. "But Brock Rumlow is in the cafeteria; he's currently eating the bagel sandwiches, but that won't stop him forever. Can you go there and see what he wants?"

Coulson's feeling of tentative satisfaction vanished.

"Yeah, this might've been our fault," Werner admitted, meekly. "He'd been there when Wu Ling and I pulled our operation-"

"Let's just go and see what he wants," Grant sighed, looking no happier about this situation than anyone else did. "Hopefully, it will be because of the bagels, but I don't think that we're going to be that lucky."

For once in their lives, Coulson was in agreement with him.

/ / /

"So, we're in agreement then," Tony Stark said brightly, looking at the rest of the Avengers that had assembled in their building. "None of us have no idea what went bloop, sending us back in time."

"Not true, friend Tony," Thor replied, sounding just as cheerful. "My father is currently my father, _not_ Loki in disguise, and where is my brother, I've no idea." He looked around. "As such, I'm quite sure that this his doing, just not sure why."

There were many generic noises of agreement, but – nothing specific all the same. Except for Bruce Banner, it seemed.

"Come on, people," he said, sounding more like himself and not like the Hulk. "It's not that hard. Do we need to go through another Civil War, here?"

More silence as no one knew – or wanted – to break it. "The thing is, Bruce," Clint admitted, unhappily, "is that without you, or Thor, around, we all kind of fell apart regardless of Ultron. Tony here liked Steve, and Steve liked Bucky, and we all just pretended that it was all about the Sokovia accords and just played along until it was too late-"

"Yes, well, me and Thor too have fought each other – on Sakaar, or rather, the Hulk and Thor fought, yet we still regained our friendship afterwards," Bruce didn't back down, which was atypical for the normally mild-mannered scientist, (the big green guy was someone else, of course, but he wasn't in the building right now). "Was our mutual friendship that hollow that not even some unexpected time travel cannot fix it? Because really, from my point of view, the only thing that can trump time travel is an alien invasion, and do we really need another one?"

"We defeated the first one, we surely can do that again," Natasha shrugged, "or at least – fight them to a standstill. Alien invasions are easy. Fixing our broken camaraderie? Much harder."

"Camaraderie?"

"I _am_ a Russian, comrade," Natasha smiled thinly at Sharon Carter. "Some things slip through, even after all this time."

"That's fine," Sharon pinched her nose, "but-"

Natasha opened her mouth to override Sharon's argument and to say that at least T'Challa seemed to be doing better and was doing some damage control in Wakanda with his family, when J.A.R.V.I.S., rather than Vision or F.R.I.D.A.Y., spoke up:

"Excuse me, Mr. Stark? A baroness Von Strucker is here to see you. She does not have an appointment, but she does say that she's ready to deal."

There was a pause as the Avengers, (the initial version), realized that _this_ was certainly something _new._

"Is she alone, J.A.R.V.I.S.?" Tony asked, mostly stalling than anything else.

"She's with a bodyguard, but he has remained in the lobby," J.A.R.V.I.S. replied promptly. "My sensors indicate that she's unarmed otherwise."

"Okay, then let her in-" Tony began, when the door opened, and the woman in question entered the room. For someone in her early fifties, she was still good-looking, but certainly not a fighter. "-Thank you, J.A.R.V.I.S."

"Hello, Mr. Stark, captain Rogers, ladies and gentlemen," the baroness spoke warmly in fluent English but with a notable Hispanic accent. "Nice to meet you all at last."

"Likewise, dear lady," Tony replied cheerfully, his public persona firmly in place. "So, how can we help you-? You have us at somewhat of a disadvantage-"

"Well, I'm here mostly because while you did get rid of my no-good husband, and that old fraud, List, you've also caused _a lot_ of collateral damage, and I would rather you _not_ do that. True, being a widow would be more straightforward and simple, but my boy was right the first time around, so I will try to go through the divorce motions instead. There, I said my piece, now state your terms."

For once, Tony was speechless, so it was up to someone else to fill-in the silence.

"Ma'am," Steve said quietly, but firmly. "Believe us or not, the creation of Ultron wasn't intentional; we'll gladly – bypass him, and see what we can do without him in the future. Plus," he added with a sideways look at Burton, "maybe Pietro will live-"

"Who, now?" the baroness asked instead, with an almost-deceptive mildness that did not quite hide the genuine curiosity underneath.

"The Maximoff twins," Natasha replied instead. "We've met them in Sokovia-"

"Mmm," the baroness nodded sagely. "The Leviathan?"

"The what now?" Rogers blinked.

"The Leviathan. It is a national security organization of Russia – in all of its' state incarnations. My husband and his Hydra buddies called it the Leviathan, because it is big, strong, lurking, and doesn't like to be disturbed."

"As opposed to Hydra?" Rogers felt oddly defensive of the crazy-evil organization here for some reason.

"My son and his friends believe that Hydra is a parasite that is run by people who only want to hurt other people," the baroness shrugged. "Having met Daniel Whitehall and few other people – including Malick – I think that they are on to something and that with Malick having more than second thoughts this time around too."

Steve opened his mouth, ready to argue.

"Please, let this go," Sharon told him.

Steve closed his mouth, reluctantly.

"Now then," Sharon looked back at the baroness. "Does it mean that you're ready to negotiate?"

"Yes," the older woman nodded in reply. "My boy is already dating the daughter of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s deputy director, might as well pitch in." She paused. "He's going to introduce her to me soon, this time around, so might as well start rebuilding my image early. Problems?"

"No," Sharon shrugged and looked at Natasha.

There was another pause that no one knew how to fill.

"So, S.H.I.E.L.D.?" Tony tried, bravely. "I thought that it went down after the entire Pierce-and-Fury mess?"

"Some fraction of it survived, at least for a while," Natasha frowned, "but it was never the same. Milady baroness?"

"Please, call me Alma," the older woman replied calmly, "and I think that you should talk to my boy first for the details – for a while he was keeping an eye on it for his own reasons, **cough**."

The women present exchanged thoughtful looks.

"It's at times like these that I need Sif," Thor muttered to Hawkeye. "Wonder what _she_ is doing right now?"

/ / /

The first impression of Brock Rumlow on Skye was that: big. And ugly. And dirty. And somehow not even corrupt, but venal, and unquestionably malicious. He _was not_ that much bigger than Ward was, yet somehow seemed to be even more powerful than her…someone was.

"Rumlow," Coulson said quietly. "Long time no see."

Rumlow – Crossbones – just grinned. It was an ugly grin and it did not do him any favors. "Can't say that I've missed you either, _field director_ ," he replied brightly. "But yeah, nice digs you got here-"

"Is that why you're here-?"

"Nah, I just followed the Brits," Rumlow jabbed his fingers at Jemma and Morse, "and look at what I found!"

"You followed us?" Jemma could not help but ask. "But we didn't sense you, or-"

"Itty-bitty, you might be cute in a prepubescent sort of way, but I've been doing this for a lot longer than either of you," Rumlow replied dismissively. "Now, where were we?"

"In the cafeteria?" someone muttered quietly. Rumlow shot a sharp look in that direction but did not do anything. That was good, but Skye – or Daisy – was not sure that she could stop him even with her powers, and right now, she did not have them.

"Right then," Rumlow sounded much less friendly here and more hostile, and judging by the tension in May – Melinda May, though Wu Ling was also tense – this was worse. "Ward-"

"Rumlow," Grant's own voice was flat. "Hydra had Kara here sexually abused. That tears it for me, so no, not interested."

There was a pause as Rumlow drummed his fingers on the tabletop, apparently caught flat-footed. "You know," this time there was almost a plaintive note in his voice, "at least the kids there let me and Sin make our pitch."

"Yes, and they told me all about it. Was it going to be a different pitch for me and Kara?"

Daisy frowned. Since when there was a 'him and Kara'? And after the vault D – this time around – um…

"…No," Rumlow confessed, "but it was worth a shot. The old Hydra's robots are fine, but we could use more people in our Hydra." He shot Grant a dark, heavy look; Grant returned it, pointedly blank. "If you change your mind-"

"No, we won't," Kara spoke from behind Grant, but her voice did not shake, not one bit. "You're not welcome, not unless you change your M.O. or whatever it is called."

Rumlow's only response was a crooked, humorless grimace, and then he got onto his feet with just one smooth motion, and left. And no one even tried to stop him, even though they had him outnumbered – he was that scary, it seemed.

"Now what?" Leo asked no one in particular.

"Kara's having a panic attack – please help?" Tripp replied all the same.

 _TBC_


	11. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10**

 _Disclaimer: none of the characters are mine, but belong to many other people instead._

 _Note: and since Disney/Marvel got Fox/X-Men franchise as a part of its' enterprise now, expect a surprise…_

Phil Coulson had mixed feelings. Oh, not about Kara slash agent 33, there was no issues – the FitzSimmons whisked the other woman off to the infirmary as soon as they saw her face, this was no ruse, imitation, or anything like that, and the feelings were about everything else.

On one hand, even before S.H.I.E.L.D. fell, and Brock Rumlow and his S.T.R.I.K.E. team were ousted as a part of Hydra's plot to take over America and the rest of the world, Coulson did his best to avoid the younger man – unlike some other double agents, Rumlow never really pretended to be anything but a brute, though one that was useful. (Yes, this sort of ambiguity did more harm than good to S.H.I.E.L.D.'s reputation in the long run, but in the short term, Fury apparently thought that it was worth it, so there was that). Now, however, Rumlow exhibited no nostalgia regarding the fall of the old S.H.I.E.L.D., so it was extremely unlikely that his visit would result in anything good in either the short term or the long, but-

But on the other hand, the agents, the people around him and Melinda didn't seem to be too afraid of Rumlow's visit, (now that he was gone, anyhow), and were instead walking around, doing their business, which was to say, they were making S.H.I.E.L.D. run as if it was in the time of old and Coulson could finally admit to himself, (and maybe to a handful of other people), that this was what he wanted, he honestly missed the old S.H.I.E.L.D.

Oh, make no mistake, he was proud of his team ever since the old S.H.I.E.L.D. fell, and he knew that all of them did their best to keep the new S.H.I.E.L.D. running, only somehow it never really picked up, and the last stage of S.H.I.E.L.D. – before Fitz touched the 0-8-4 and reset _everything_ – was the seven of them stuck in two different cars, and frankly, they only needed a second car because it was Lola, and Coulson had no intent of letting Lola stay in anyone's custody, U.S. Air Force or not. And now…

Now things were rather how they were in the old S.H.I.E.L.D., with some extra craziness thrown in. He didn't like _all_ of the bits, such as how Grant and Daisy/Skye were busy with each other, (talking to each other with some great excitement, and while Coulson wasn't that proficient with reading lips, he was good enough to get the gist of what they were talking about, so yeah – he had mixed feelings about them, just because)…

"Phil, are you listening to me?" Melinda asked quietly, shaking her friend out of his reverie. "We just had Rumlow here-"

"He won't tell anyone – he's largely on the outs with the rest of the Hydra," Werner spoke carefully, quietly, (while also keeping Wu Ling between himself and the agents, just in case). "Boss man is right," he jabbed his finger at Grant and Daisy. "Rumlow doesn't even care about Hydra, he usually just wants to hurt people, and then he met this Sin woman-"

"You don't know her?"

"No. Do you know _of_ her? She claims to be related to the Red Skull, and since, director, you're S.H.I.E.L.D. specialist of everything Captain America related-"

"I am not – I try to be, but I'm not," Coulson gave the younger man a look, "and you're not lying about her being related to the Red Skull, are you?" Werner shook his head. "We'll probably have to talk to Captain Rogers or someone else…" He paused, feeling something almost like his own panic attack rising-

"Sir, are you okay?" Wu Ling asked softly, sounding very much like her mother that it kind of hurt. Still Coulson could actually see Melinda from a corner of one eye, he was not the only one.

"Yes," he replied gruffly, "where were we?"

"We're going to prepare an offensive, or a counteroffensive, upon Puerto Rico in regards to stopping Daniel Whitehall?" Werner said helpfully, before Tripp, (who had been quiet himself ever since Rumlow left their current HQ), interrupted them, sounding rather regretful:

"Yes, but as an angel/ex-angel/future angel/partial angel I have to suggest that agent May and the director go beforehand to Dr. Garner and make their peace with him – it will be good for S.H.I.E.L.D. in regards to the InHumans."

"Do we have to?" Melinda looked distinctly unhappy, though it was not entirely about her ex-husband. "And by that I mean do we need to get involved with the InHumans this time around again? It brought both them and us mostly misery, and not even Skye appears to be too enthusiastic about them this time around."

"True, but still, it might help when dealing with Dr. Whitehall," Tripp did not back down. "And yes, I admit, that I sucked as the guardian angel the first time around, but still, try to follow my advice? I promise to steer you no wrong-"

"Isn't this Grant's line-?"

Tripp shook his head. "Grant decided long ago that no matter what he says or does, you will never trust him, especially not on his terms, so he decided to handle you…just handle you, as a specialist does. The bit that he said earlier about your values and morals? Yeah, he wasn't exactly lying there, sadly."

"I know," Melinda nodded. "And actually? Neither did me…" she looked away. "Phil, I think that on some level Tripp here is right – we need to make peace with Andrew…"

"Fine," Coulson muttered, "but after that, we'll get married…"

Melinda reached out and began to choke him. However, since she only used one hand, Coulson knew that she was not being serious, (and she was not a cyborg either, which was good)…

/ / /

…Wakandan sunsets were epic. Wakandan sunrises were almost as good. "And so, it is decided," T'Challa spoke to the rest of his family, (including Nakia because _reasons_ ), "we are going to discover – or re-discover – Eric and see if we can prevent the issues of the last time around. I didn't want to kill him back then, and I don't want to do it again-"

"Excuse me," Okoye, (who had been scarce ever since time has flipped for whatever reasons), appeared in the royal dining room. "There are people to see you-"

"Fine, send them in, quickly," T'Chaka, (who was not dead yet himself this time around), waved magnanimously. Okoye frowned – something that she never did in the presence of the Wakandan royal family unless there was a _really good_ reason – but complied. In stepped a woman, who – in Nakia's opinion – seemed to combine queen Ramonda's grace with the good looks of Halle Berry, (most Wakandans were not big fans of U.S. mass media. Because Nakia had spent so much time abroad as a spy, she actually was).

"Hello," the newcomer spoke in Wakandan with only a slight accent, (and it was not American either). "Everyone, long time no see. T'Challa."

"Ororo. Hello!" T'Challa seemed to have short-circuited something in his brain, and that was not a good thing.

"Hello. I'm Nakia," Nakia did her best to rise to the occasion.

"Nice to meet you, Nakia. I'm Ororo," the other woman did not look too intimidated, and besides-"I'm T'Challa's _ex_ -wife, so don't worry."

"Hello!" A young boy, slightly younger than Shuri, (and with a strong family resemblance to T'Challa), looked from behind her. "I'm Meijnaru!"

There was a pause. "Son," T'Chaka gave the man in question a paternal slap on the head, "either you're doing everything backwards to vex me, or are just an idiot." He then turned to the boy. "And hello to you too, young man. I'm your grandfather."

As Shuri began to giggle in delight, and T'Challa just made faces, Nakia was sure that no one was having as bad a day as she did.

/ / /

Eric Killmonger, (also known as N'Jodoka), was not impressed. "Listen, kid. Just because we got along in Purgatory does not mean anything. The time flipped its' top. We are back in the world of the living. We are done."

Lincoln Campbell raised one eyebrow, not impressed. "We aren't done because we weren't an item, anyhow. I just believe that you need to go to therapy, and I just happen to know one, because he is one of our people-"

"Don't care," Eric huffed, crossing his hands. "Just because I agreed to it back on the other side, doesn't mean that I agree to it now. Things have changed."

"No, they haven't. Not here and now. Besides, it is just a therapist, cough. Most of the time, though you wouldn't won't to annoy him – as far as us InHumans go, he's got a lot more power than I do."

"You know, that entire InHumans, humans with powers story was cute on the other side-"

"You're apparently a prince of some super-secret super-powerful African kingdom-"

"Fine," Eric gave in, reluctantly, "Let's go and see that doctor of yours-"

"Good," Lincoln's companion, an older man that wore sunshades even though there was no sun right now, (and still made them work), finally joined the conversation. "Hold on to me – this is going to get fast-"

And Eric experienced his first teleportation since, well, ever.

 _TBC_


End file.
